


The Black Ring

by LittleMuse, Majestrix



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Fantasy, Original Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-01-18
Updated: 2011-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:17:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMuse/pseuds/LittleMuse, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Majestrix/pseuds/Majestrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Jo wanted was to find her place in the world. Returning home from college with bad news and her first serious boyfriend, she finds far more than she planned to when her uncle inadvertently draws them all into the political problems of another world to which the whole family is inextricably tied.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Black Ring

She ran.

Her swollen belly made it difficult, and she stumbled through the woods gracelessly, but she ran, and not slowly. One hand pressed protectively to her stomach and the other clutched the staff -- the staff, more important even than her growing child. She could be lost, with all she carried, but the staff was indispensable. She had hoped to carry it until the end of her days, wield it, pass it on, but she had not expected them to venture so close and there was now no choice.

She would have to hide it.

One by one, they had been hunted, and she could imagine no staff had survived, let alone its wielder. With a surge of satisfaction, she realized neither had any been found. It made the hunters' pursuit of her seem all the more desperate.

She tripped and she fell, and she caught herself on her hands and knees, but the staff went flying. In a blind panic, she snatched for it in the dry leaves and underbrush, hand closing around the base. She had no time, no time. There would be no outrunning them.

In a trembling crawl, she shuffled her way between the trees and to the base of an oak, the dark and the sound of pounding hooves closing in. Then, whimpering, she began to claw at the earth at the base.

There was no time to dig the hole deep; it would simply have to be deep enough. She would cover it, but it would have to masquerade as a root. In time, perhaps -- hopefully -- the tree would grow over it, would recognize the staff as part of itself, of the earth.

There were loud shouts and an answering call, drawing nearer, and she shoved it as far as she could into the ground, angling it toward the tree's growth.

She found herself sobbing over the almost nonexistent mound as her pursuers burst through the trees; for her life, for her child's, for the staff, for her poor work in protecting them all.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it's so short, but it's only a prologue. There will be more soon; this has become quite the undertaking.


End file.
